So much for piracy is a post
to the Demigod Forums where Stardock's Brad "Frogboy" Wardell describes a
commercially successful Demigod launch in spite of the game's early
troubles and the rampant piracy of the DRM-free game. It turns out the
action/strategy hybrid debuted at #3 on the retail PC sales charts, in spite of
that covering only a partial week of sales, and not counting the considerable
number of copies that were digitally distributed. Brad says, "The reality that
most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people
who don’t buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job,
as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it
aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and
service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary – our
customers." He concludes saying simply: "When the focus of energy is put on
customers rather than fighting pirates, you end up with more sales. It seems
common sense to me but then again, I’m just an engineer. "

Game's quite buggy in multiplayer at the moment (broken Favor Points system, unresponsive clicks, sound issues slowing down the game to a crawl and Comp AI who sometimes seems prone to having outrageous speed, regen and attack speed) but regardless of all this, the game's damn fun and really addicting, especially if you have friends who have copies.

Haven't been this addicted since well.. DotA for Warcraft 3. And I'm sure that eventually most of the issues I've mentioned will be patched up and fixed.

A rough quote was something like "we saw vastly increased sales in the titles first weeks" though I have no idea what they were comparing it to exactly.

I'm guessing they were comparing the sales of the first weeks to the sales after the first few weeks..? Unfortunately, that doesn't really prove anything since games always sell the most when first released.

I haven't seen any sales data for Riddick at all and it's NPD numbers aren't due for what, a week?

No, I haven't played it, so I'll trust that what you say is true. But I think that if you re-read Creston's point, it is more about that Blizzard is still building on an existing franchise as they have done with Starcraft and Diablo. They haven't done much that can be considered completely new in quite some time. Granted, WoW is a very different property than anything else as it is an MMO, but it is still tied to the Warcraft franchise.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

No, I'm saying it's a new product from Blizzard. Have you played it? Lich King is bigger than some entire worlds in other MMOs. He was being all nitpicky about how Blizzard doesn't make "new" products or something silly. And again for the third time, SC2 is going to hit this year, Diablo 3 most likely in 2010. You could say any developer who hasn't made a game in 6 months hasn't made anything "new" but that's just being pedantic.

Creston, Wrath of the Lich King is new and if you don't think it constitutes a new game then you need to rethink what content is. It's roughly the size of the last expansion + 400 quests. As I already mentioned, Blizzard is releasing a new title this year as well, most likely Starcraft 2. I'm sorry that doesn't fit into your rigid definition but you seem to be the only person who really cares about it anyways.

A rough quote was something like "we saw vastly increased sales in the titles first weeks" though I have no idea what they were comparing it to exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Vastly increased sales compared to what?

Blizzard has long development cycles but that doesn't mean they don't release new games, it just means they take longer to do so. They've got Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, an unnamed MMO project and some secret thing in the works right now

How is any of that NEW? What about these games is new? The guy I quoted said that Madden and Halo are not NEW games, they're just polished versions of previous games. How exactly is that any different from what Blizzard does? When was the last time Blizzard actually released a NEW game? Answer : World of Warcraft.

I've never done it myself, but I believe what you need to do is archive an up-to-date version of Demigod via Impulse, then use Impulse on the other machines to install Demigod from the archive file.

Unfortunately, archiving is encrypted with your account data. So you still have to be logged in to impulse and activate in order for it to work. Additionally, archiving only works for the original OS you've got on, and the only machine with a net connection has vista, everything else is on xp.

I think he meant what charts. I haven't seen any sales data for Riddick at all and it's NPD numbers aren't due for what, a week?

What was true? That games sell better when they have uncracked DRM?

EA and Bioware said this about Mass Effect which gave the piracy community considerable trouble for awhile and to this day remains an annoyance to pirate considering the multitude of non-working cracks that were spread around. A rough quote was something like "we saw vastly increased sales in the titles first weeks" though I have no idea what they were comparing it to exactly.

I'm not saying Blizzard makes bad games, far from it, but saying they're one of two developers that make "new and interesting" products is just crazy.

Blizzard has long development cycles but that doesn't mean they don't release new games, it just means they take longer to do so. They've got Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, an unnamed MMO project and some secret thing in the works right now. We'll likely see SC2 this year. Also while I don't care for WoW, I wouldn't say it doesn't count just because I don't play it.

I spend WAY WAY WAY less on pc games today than I did just a few years ago. I used to be excited to see what new games are coming out, ready to drop dollars on release to see if I liked them. Today that is not the case

Well said, Tumbler. Same for me. I think the only game I'm going to buy full price this year is Dragon Age. Everything else I'll either wait until it's on sale, or I'm simply skipping it because of the retarded DRM implementations.

I think DRM is really for publishers who don't know if their game sucks or not and making sure that everyone buys it either way. Maybe if they have some clue during development, they'll be able to help to make the game better if it's lacking.

What would be ideal for me would be a Steam-like client and folder structure

Actually what would be ideal would be an SVN-like client where users could selectively download, update, and rollback their games at their own choosing. That's one reason why I love open source game projects which use SVN because it's so easy and flexible to download and update a game. There's no Windows installation necessary. Once you have the files, you just click on the game's executable and run it.

I think it's about treating your customers with respect, like Valve

Valve certainly doesn't treat its customer with respect. Its games are laden with DRM including decade-old crap that shouldn't have any, it's inattentive at best (no telephone support, slow to respond to support requests, and far too few employees handling game updates and Steam support issues), and it throws the Steam Subscriber Agreement and its zero-tolerance policies in its customers faces when they complain or request refunds. That's not respect for the customer. That's disdain.

I've gotta say that I was actually pretty disappointed by Demigod and Stardock in General. This was the first game that I purchased from them where the DRM actually got in the way of my enjoyment of the game, which seems to go against the very ethos of Stardock.

I think most people would agree that multiplayer is really the core of this game, and the manual, the official forums, etc, all say that there is no restriction of PC's that are allowed for LAN play on a single copy of the game. Being that I often play LAN games at the office, this was one of the prime factor for me picking up a copy, the other being that I love supporting Stardock. But for the life of me, I can't figure out how to actually play on a LAN without activating the game on every machine. Looking on the forums it seems there are a number of people with the same issue. Everything I can find says that it's impossible. Kind of silly that they say this game has no DRM IMO.

Pretty much. I wonder how Riddick has fared sales wise, considering it has yet to be cracked.

Riddick has been cracked for over a week.

As far as its sales go, the delay of the crack won't make any signficant difference in sales just as it didn't for True Crime: Streets of L.A. which took six or seven months before it was cracked. The lack of a crack isn't going to propel a pirate to buy the game. He'll just wait or get something else which is cracked.